> On 5 Oct 2015, at 12:11 PM, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote: > >> On 5/10/2015 11:41 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> On 5 October 2015 at 09:37, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote: >>> >>>> On 4/10/2015 6:54 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>>> If matter is placed in the same configuration as you, it will think it is >>>> you and have all your physical and psychological qualities. This relies on >>>> the assumption that your physical and psychological qualities are due to >>>> the configuration of matter in your body. It does not rely on the further >>>> assumption that the copy be verified. >>> >>> But thinking (or knowing) that it is a copy does require the transfer of >>> information. Otherwise the only sensible position to take is that there are >>> two independent persons. >> >> The copy will feel that it is a continuation of the original. In general the >> copy will not know it is a copy unless it is supplied with the information >> or encounters the original, and even then it will feel it is the original, >> despite knowing intellectually that it is a copy. > > It all depends on the information available. If the person does not know that > he is a copy of someone else, then there will be no reason to suspect such. > If one does know that one is a copy, then you will regard yourself as a new > independent person who shares some background with another independently > existing person. > > > >> >>> I think I have lost track of exactly what you are trying to establish by >>> this line of argument. Perhaps we should start with a clear statement of >>> what you think these copies actually achieve. >> >> To simplify so that only one version of you is extant at a time: I think >> that if you died and a copy of you at the moment prior to death was made >> somewhere else, you would survive in that copy, regardless of how it was >> made or how far away it was. > > That might depend on how you died. If the disease from which you died was an > intrinsic part of you, then the resurrected individual would also be dead. If > not, it differs in essential ways. > > I think it is of some importance where the copy is reconstructed. If you are > copied non-destructively, then you continue as the same individual. If the > copy is reconstructed at much the same place and time, then there is an > identifiable copy that then goes on to his own independent life. It is no > longer me in any useful sense because of the inevitable divergence of > experience. If the copy is reconstructed far away, then the difference in > environment is sufficient to make it a less close continuation. If it is > reconstructed much later in time, then it is largely irrelevant because the > original has moved on in that time. I am not the same person as I was twenty > years ago, even though I am the unique continuer of that person. So > reconstructing a copy of me made twenty years ago, now has every bit as > little resemblance to me as another individual. > > If the copying process is destructive, and the reconstruction is immediate, > then there is a sense in which there is a continuer, but it could also be > argued that death is death, and that the copy is a new individual, with some > carry-over of memories and features -- not essentially more than could be > gained by close knowledge of the original person, and a bit of facial > reconstruction. > > So psychological continuation is very dependent on the exact details of the > case, and if copying of consciousness ever becomes possible, then, by and > large, it will simply be regarded as another way of creating new people -- it > will not be a recipe for immortality in any except a very impoverished sense.
The example I was thinking of was destructive copying. This is equivalent to being knocked out and carried to another place. It doesn't matter how far or if there is a time delay, since you don't experience this. It also doesn't matter if there is a causal connection, as there would be in teleportation or being knocked out and carried, or if the copying occurs randomly. There is no way for you to know from introspection how you have come to wake up in a new place. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
